Jewish and Russian Revolutionaries Exiled to Siberia, 1901-1917 (Jewish Studies)

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The situation in St. Petersburg was growing more and more tense. The People's Revolution had begun by overthrowing the corrupt Tsarist regime in March 1917, but the workers and the peasants felt the revolution had much farther to go. Tired of fighting a war that meant little to them, the soldiers also grew restless: "When the land belongs to the peasants, and the factories to the workers, and the power to the Soviets, then we'll know we have something to fight for, and we'll fight for it!"

Lenin pressed the Bolsheviks to seize power. On the night of October 24, an organized mass of workers, soldiers, peasants, and sailors stormed the Winter Palace. On the following day, at the opening of the second Congress of Soviets, Trotsky announced the overthrow of the provisional government. Counterrevolutionary forces marched on the capital, but the Revolutionary Army triumphed. After all, "[t]his was their battle, for their world; the officers in command were elected by them. For the moment that incoherent multiple will was one will."

In Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed tells the story of Red October and the Russian revolution from a unique, firsthand perspective. Reed, an American journalist, was on assignment in Russia for The Masses--then the principal radical journal in the United States--and spent his days walking the streets, reading and collecting handbills, newspapers, and posters, and talking to people. As a result, Ten Days crackles with energetic immediacy. At its best moments it reads like a novel: Reed recounts conversations and arguments, details political machinations, and speculates on personal motives. Though this is no mere piece of propaganda, Reed's enthusiasm for the revolution infuses the text (some readers may be put off by Reed's florid prose), casting each counterrevolutionary act in a negative light. Helpful notes flesh out the background for those less familiar with the preceding events and render this a solid work of history. Ten Days That Shook the World is a stirring account of a stirring event. --Sunny Delaney

Book Description

The basis for the Academy Award–winning 1981 film Reds, Reed's classic eyewitness account captures the opening days of the Russian Revolution. His passionately involved narrative describes the fall of the provisional government, the assault on the Winter Palace, Lenin's seizure of power, and other tumultuous events. "Brilliant and entertaining." — The New York Times Book Review. 16 illustrations.

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This book is a slice of intensified history-history as I saw it. It does not pretend to be anything but a detailed account of the November Revolution, when the Bolsheviki, at the head of the workers and soldiers, seized the state power of Russia and placed it in the hands of the Soviets.

Customer Reviews:

One of a kind.......2007-09-10

This book is one of the most biased books ever written, but this shouldnt be taken as a criticism. This is one of the those history books that was written by someone that was actually there at the time things were happening, and the author made it clear that he was not trying to present "both sides" of the story. He was going to present the "people's side" (at least at that specific time). You dont have to be a communist to enjoy this book. In fact, you can compare the dream the people had at that time with what they actually got later. Beautifully written, this book makes you live the revolution. As you read it, you find yourself walking down the same street with the people at that time and listening to them talk and argue and even fight. Thanks to Reed's amazing style you can visualize the whole thing.

THE HEROIC AGE OF THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION .......2006-11-29

John Reed, Harvard Class of 1910, epitomized the best of the pre-World War I bourgeois radicals. Unlike the vast majority of his Class and class he cast his fate with the working people and oppressed of America at a time when the dominant left bourgeois movement- the Progressive movement- was busy applying band aids to the increasingly inequitable capitalist system. The radical movement is always in need, sometimes desperately in need, of intellectuals to tell its side of the story. Despite some exceptions, like Reed, the intellectuals then, as now, either stand on the sidelines or at most acted as `fellow travelers' to the movement. Reed on the contrary put all his energies into the movement. As a journalist he sought out all the radical hotspots of his time starting with his coverage of the Mexican Revolution, through the various workers' strikes of the 1910's in America culminating in his coverage of the heroic period of the Russian Revolution. His journalistic account of the Bolshevik seizure of power, Ten Days That Shook the World, stands even today as one of the best eyewitness accounts of that turbulent time in Russia. Reed had access to many elements of Russian society, from the revolutionatry workers quarters in Vyborg and Kronstadt to high society in the shadow of the Winter Palace, and mined those sources for his material. He brings the passion of the partisan in the best sense to his work.

If you want insights into the struggle for power from a central character in the fight then Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution is must reading. If you want to know what the Bolshevik Revolution meant for the configuration of world geo-politcs them E.H. Carr's three volume study is for you. If you want to know what the various parties were up to in the period prior to the Bolshevik seizure of power then Sukhanov's Notes on the Revolution will provide a rather insightful guide. However, if you want to know how the revolutionary developments in 1917 affected various layers of society (and how they responded) then Reed is for you. Enough said.

How to get the most out of this great book.......2006-06-24

To appreciate this book, you have to understand what it is and what it isn't.

This is top-notch journalism, by someone with a lot of insight into what he was seeing, and a knack for turning up in all the right places. It gives you a vivid, unparalleled *flavor* of the Russian revolution of 1917, the first victorious working class revolution.

But it's still *journalism*. It's not an organized chronicle of what happened, beginning at the beginning and introducing events and ideas in a logical order. On top of that, Reed arrived in Russia at the climax of the revolution, after seven months of intense activity by an overwhelming cast of characters. If you read it too casually, it's like starting a textbook by reading the last chapter.

To get the most out of the book, I suggest reading Reed's introductory material carefully, probably returning to it more than once as you read the book. If you need more help, there's a good summary in the last two chapters of "Revolutionary Continuity: the Early Years" by Farrell Dobbs.

Your efforts will be well-rewarded. It really is great journalism.

For a definitive history, I highly recommend the widely acclaimed masterpiece, "History of the Russian Revolution" by Leon Trotsky. If you like one book, you'll like the other. I promise. Please read my review. (Click on "See all my reviews" above.)

Some reviewers complained that Reed doesn't explain the revolution's shortcomings -- the Russian revolution obviously turned out badly in the long run. But not everyone agrees that the revolution was fatally flawed from the very beginning. I don't. It's hard to read Reed's book and believe it was anything but an authentic popular revolution. For what went wrong, I recommend "The Revolution Betrayed" by Leon Trotsky and "Lenin's Final Fight", a collection of Lenin's last writings.

Eye Witness Account - Recommended by Lenin.......2005-11-15

This is an excellent account of the Russian Revolution told in story form and should be included in your study of the Revolution. The author was an American journalist and active participant in the American Labor movement aiding strikers in Paterson, NJ. In 1919 he chaired the meeting which founded the Communist-Labour Party, later the Communist Party of the U.S.A.. There is no such thing as an "objective" and neutral study, all sides are bias, so this book should be read with the so called anti-communist accounts to balance this study out.

There are a lot of details and yet it is told in story form. I think the other book to read on this subject is the History of the Russian Revolution written by the source itself, Leon Trotsky. Also Trotsky's book, The Revolution Betrayed. Then you can go to writings of Lenin. I found a short book on a couple of essays by the German Socialist and contemporary of the Socialist movement, Rosa Luxemburg, is very significant as an analysis. In this she criticizes much of Lenin and Trotsky's centralization as opposed to opportunism and the disbanding of the Duma and so forth, an excellent read! There are also quite a few modern books on the Russian Revolution as Richard Piper and others. This book is an excellent place to start and should not be excluded in this study.

This book as scores of statements Reed took from the many of the Bolshevik - proletarian and the bourgeois newspapers, documents, announcements and decrees of Kerensky and the provincial government, short conversations with Bolsheviks, Cadets, Cossacks, Mensheviks, proletarians and bourgeois alike. What I found so helpful is that Reed, as an sort of neutral in between person, was able to interview many of the opposing sides.

A useful exposition of the October Revolution.......2005-02-10

John Reed's book, "Ten Days That Shook The World", presents a challenge to well-meaning scholars of the October Revolution everywhere. The continuing debate over comrade Reed's accounts of the events of the socialist triumph over the bourgeois Kerenskyite oligarchs has been overshadowed by the present-day temporary setback experienced by the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its struggle to resume its true and rightful place as the vanguard of the international proletariat. As Engels wrote in his classic work, "Materialism and the Apostasis of the 18th Brumaire" (Progress Press, Moscow, 1957), the inevitability of achieving a worker's state is far from a seamless upward trail, and will, from time to time encounter momentary challenges and obstacles thrown in the path of progess by counter-revolutionary and capitalist elements.

How does the proper historian view Reed's work? Clearly, as comrade V. I. Lenin wrote his original introduction to "Ten Days", Reed was at his best in reporting on the empirical reality of the proletarian movements inside Petrograd. As comrade Lenin and others later commented, Reed could be excused as a "revolutionary journalist" (a bourgeois conceit, of course) for failing to correctly observe the deviationism underlying the Plenkhavites and so-called moderate Socialist Revolutionaries, not to mention crypto-anarchists and other undisciplined romantic individualists. Reed erred in not uncovering the Menshevik centrist trend in the Russian Social Democratic movement, lead by Trotsky and Bukharin, arch-conspirators and chauvinists who were rightfully expelled from the Party in 1927. Indeed, it was with comradely restraint and generosity that comrade Lenin granted a state memorial to comrade Reed's memory....

Regrettably, truly objective scholarship has all but disappeared since the unfortunate events of the past decade. Perhaps the best critical analysis of the contradictions in Reed's works is found in comrade S.I. Klepov's monumental and enthralling six volume work, "Annals of the Sixth Comintern's Sub-Committee On Far Eastern Labor Relations in the Baikal-Irkutsk Regions (Progress Press, Moscow, 1937 (sadly, now out of print)), in which at page 708, he writes, "The American J. Reed fails to dialectically confront the errors of so-called moderates but in reality bourgeois roaders such as Zinoviev. He can be excused many of these faults due to his education in the infantile American labor movement and its inability to grasp such fundamental necessities as party discipline... As we know, "facts" are not the same as "truth." Shorn of the necessary empiro-criticism guided by the steady hand of the Party, Reed's "account" of the November revolution are but an empty shadow of the genuine proletariat victory." Truly such words were written on pages of gold!

Surely we cannot improve on comrade Klepov's correct analysis. Comrade Reed's work, while flawed, can be forgiven as a good and indulgent father excuses an errant but well-meaning child.

The Russian Revolution, 1917 (New Approaches to European History)

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Extremely well written

The Russian Revolution, 1917 (New Approaches to European History)
Rex A. Wade
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521425654

Book Description

Rex Wade presents a new account of one of the pivotal events of modern history, combining his own long study of the revolution with the best of contemporary scholarship. Wade recasts the political history of the revolution while giving due space to its social history. He incorporates people often omitted, including women, national minority peoples, and peasantry front soldiers, enabling a richer and more complete history to emerge. The story is narrated with pace, verve, and exceptional clarity; the chronology, maps and illustrations give further support to the reader.

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Extremely well written.......2001-11-23

While at George Mason University I had the honor of taking a class from Dr. Wade while he was writing this book. It turned out as an outstanding effort. Not only is the book scholarly and well researched, it is extremely well written, a rarity for scholarly historical works. Unlike previous books, Dr. Wade gives significant focus on previously overlooked minorities such as women while still maintaining focus on the workers and pesants.

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In the Shadow of Revolution

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Asked shortly after the revolution about how she viewed the new government, Tatiana Varsher replied, "With the wide-open eyes of a historian." Her countrywoman, Zinaida Zhemchuzhnaia, expressed a similar need to take note: "I want to write about the way those events were perceived and reflected in the humble and distant corner of Russia that was the Cossack town of Korenovskaia." What these women witnessed and experienced, and what they were moved to describe, is part of the extraordinary portrait of life in revolutionary Russia presented in this book. A collection of life stories of Russian women in the first half of the twentieth century, In the Shadow of Revolution brings together the testimony of Soviet citizens and émigrés, intellectuals of aristocratic birth and Soviet milkmaids, housewives and engineers, Bolshevik activists and dedicated opponents of the Soviet regime. In literary memoirs, oral interviews, personal dossiers, public speeches, and letters to the editor, these women document their diverse experience of the upheavals that reshaped Russia in the first half of this century.

As is characteristic of twentieth-century Russian women's autobiographies, these life stories take their structure not so much from private events like childbirth or marriage as from great public events. Accordingly the collection is structured around the events these women see as touchstones: the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War of 1918-20; the switch to the New Economic Policy in the 1920s and collectivization; and the Stalinist society of the 1930s, including the Great Terror. Edited by two preeminent historians of Russia and the Soviet Union, the volume includes introductions that investigate the social historical context of these women's lives as well as the structure of their autobiographical narratives.

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Just how really inevitable were tsarism's fall & Lenin's success, and was Stalin's rise an aberration?
Don't listen to the revisionists, says Pipes
Refutes Marxist mythology, but ultimately misleads
A revolutionary rethink
Good, Brief Intro to Russian Revolution

Three " Whys" of the Russian Revolution
Richard Pipes
Manufacturer: Vintage
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Release Date: 1997-05-27

Book Description

America's foremost authority on Russian communism--the author of the definitive studies The Russian Revolution and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime--now addresses the enigmas of that country's 70-year enthrallment with communism. Succinct, lucidly argued, and lively in its detail, this book offers a brilliant summation of the life's work of a master historian.

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Just how really inevitable were tsarism's fall & Lenin's success, and was Stalin's rise an aberration?.......2006-04-20

When was the Russian Revolution? The conventional answer would be October 1917. After all, people associate Lenin with the October Revolution, don't they? Well, Mr. Pipes (amongst an increasing group of others) would stop you right there. Upon the tsar's abdication Russia's first free elections (promised since that February) were held November 12, 1917. This was but days after Lenin's Bolsheviks supposedly "rode to power on a wave of popular support," yet Lenin's ilk only received enought votes to garner 175 seats out of 707! The Bolshevik takeover was more akin to a putsch, consequently. Trotsky himself wrote (in his memoirs) "that 25,000 or 30,000 people, at most, took part in the events of October in Petrograd"; this in a city of 2 million. It was largely bloodless and basically upended the hopelessly incompetent Provisional Government in the dead of one night in favor of the Petersburg Council---or "Soviet," to utilize the Russian word for council. And it was through this organ of competing power that Lenin was able to forestall Russian military units from marching in to St. Petersburg to resist him. In January when Russia's first Constituent Assemby opened Lenin immediately proposed a motion that would have prevented the duly elected Assembly from wielding any real power over the Petersburg Soviet, or any of the other Soviets in other cities. Lenin's Bolsheviks were handedly defeated in this, however; which marked the end of democracy in Russia. The next day Bolshevik Red Guards closed down the Assembly and it was never permitted to sit again. How Lenin was able to engineer this is the subject of the second part of this tri-part (extremely concise & worthy) mini-book of 84 pages. Pipes shows, in addition, how nothing of this was at all inevitable. Tsarism fell for particular reasons, mostly political, and whence it did was replaced by a Provisional Government (PG) bereft of any legitimacy. Said PG was meant to be a caretaker until elections for a Constituent Assembly could be held; elections which weren't held until more than 8 months later. The interim thus provided much time for Lenin & Company to champion the Soviets and their radical maneuverings---which disrupted the economy and war effort---while constantly calling for the elections for the CA to be held (the same Assembly which they smothered by armed force as soon as it sat). "No other group in Russia," but the Bolsheviks, Pipes writes "was prepared to consort with the enemy, and therefore, none could compete with him [meaning Lenin] effectively once the struggle for power got under way." And funds were not a problem either. "There is no longer any question," Pipes writes, "that he [Lenin] took money from Imperial Germany even while Russia & Germany were at war; we have plenty of [recently opened Russian archival] documents dating from 1917-18 proving this fact." Why didn't the democratic socialists ("who between them had garnered nearly 3/4 of the national vote") confront the Bolsheviks "on any other but the verbal level"? In Pipes's reading of the situation this was because these socialsits believed time to be on their side; that "the Bolsheviks would have no choice but sooner or later to invite them into government" to be able to get anything accomplished. Lenin, however, choose instead (based on his long written view to rule alone) to employ the use of terror to impose his will instead. Thus Pipes debunks fallacy #3 in this short treatise---that Stalin was an aberration when, in fact, he was a rather natural successor to Lenin. (Read Gorbachev advisor A. Yakovlev's book "A Century of Violence" for proof of Lenin's terror methods.) While Stalin's rise wasn't inevitable, it was a heck of a lot more likely than the 2 fallacies that he lays bare herein concerning the fall of tsarism & Lenin's rise. Tsarism's fall when it did wasn't inevitable & neither was Lenin's rise. (See Pipes's "A Concise History of the Russian Revolution" for all the details of the above.) (06Apr) Cheers!

Don't listen to the revisionists, says Pipes.......2005-04-25

As one can well discern from the title, Richard Pipes addresses the three main questions surrounding the Russian Revolution - Why did Tsarism fall?, Why Did the Bolsheviks Triumph?, and Why Did Stalin Succeed Lenin? And while answering these questions, Pipes continually challenges the revisionist school of thought. According to him, the revisionist interpretation of the Russian Revolution was heavily influenced by "interpretation of the Russian Revolution that was mandatory in the Soviet Union". Pipes makes use of the Soviet archives that were `opened up' after the Cold War to perceive the Russian Revolution from the political standpoint and question revisionist historiography.

Firstly, as to answering the question Why did Tsarism fall?, unlike revisionists, Pipes argues that the fall of Tsarism was not preordained, but can be explained by a number of "long duree, intermediate and short term" causes such as the economic weaknesses of the Tsarist regime, the social instability and the success of the intelligentsia in affecting the Tsarist regime. But before mentioning these causes, Pipes shows why Tsarism need not have collapsed. Here, he challenges the revisionists again and explains with evidence that the fall of Tsarism was very unexpected in 1917. And then he goes on to investigate the causes of the collapse of Tsarism.

On answering his second question, Pipes, right from the first chapter argues that the "Bolshevik power seizure was something of a fluke". The phrase `Bolshevik power seizure' must have given you an idea of Pipes opinion on the October Revolution. Pipes challenges the use of the term `revolution' to define the October Revolution. Pipes goes on to explain why the term `coup d'etat' would have been more suitable, giving us statistics and Lenin's words. Pipes totally disregards the social influence on the October Revolution, keen on wrong-footing the revisionists. Though the political factors might have been the most important in dictating the course of the revolution, it is true that social forces did play a role, which are disregarded in this book.

Pipes starts dealing with the third question right in the first chapter. According to him - "once it [Bolshevik power seizure] occurred and the totalitarian machine was in place, then the rise of Stalin became virtually a forgone conclusion". Pipes mentions that Stalin uses bureaucracy and the emerging resistance from the working class to gain his standing in the party. Pipes also tries to use evidence to illustrate that Trotsky did not stand a chance of following Lenin, all because of his `Jewishness' and Lenin's dislike for him. Coming from a renowned historian, this seems quite superficial.

Three "Whys" of the Russian Revolution lacks the evidence for Pipes's numerous generalisations. Furthermore, at many instances, Pipes does not support his conflicting statements. For example, while stating that Lenin laid the foundation for purges, beginning with the SR trial, he also mentions - "the killing of fellow Communists - a crime Lenin did not commit". Also, Pipes totally disregards other, especially revisionist interpretations of the Russian Revolution, though these interpretations might shed some light on the matter. This narrow-minded approach of Pipes limits his interpretations on the Russian Revolution, notably the reasons for the Bolshevik's triumph. The length of the book might have been a restricting factor, thus limiting Pipes's analysis. On the bright side, this book gives us some new ideas and interpretations of the `Whys' of the Russian Revolution to think about. Pipes language filled with sarcasm and irony makes the book an interesting read. But if one is looking for depth, then maybe we should refer to one of his more voluminous writings.

Refutes Marxist mythology, but ultimately misleads.......2005-01-20

Although Richards Pipes does an excellent job of supporting his thesis that the October 1917 revolution was fundamentally a coup without significant popular support, he neglects to satisfactorily answer the question of why the Bolsheviks triumphed in the civil war that ensued. The logistical details of Lenin's coup, while meriting some attention, are probably of less importance than the long, arduous civil war through which the Bolsheviks had to prevail. Pipes implies that once the Bolsheviks seized power, communist domination would be inevitable.

Pipe's arguments about the October Revolution are more aimed at refuting the interpretations of Soviet and libertarian historiographers than providing a coherent explanation of why the Bolsheviks triumphed. Pipes barely explores the social, political, or economic factors which led to significant proportions of Russia's population to support the Reds at one point. Why did Aleksei Brusilov, a man whose patriotism would be near-impossible to impugn, choose to lead the Red Army rather than the White? What, exactly, assured the Communists' rise to power after the October putsch? Pipes neglects these questions, instead choosing to proceed directly to the question of Stalin's ascendancy in the mid-1920s.

Pipes's interpretation of the Russian Revolution in Three "Whys" of The Russian Revolution is tight and well-constructed but in some ways very incomplete. He explains the events leading up to both revolutions impeccably well, but fails to put the October revolution in detailed social or political context. Some disagreements I may have with his dismissal of social or economic factors may be merely tautological; he classifies some events that I would define as social, cultural, or economic, such as food shortages or deeply rooted anti-government sentiments, as merely political or short-term phenomena.

As a refutation for pseudo-scientific Marxist theories of history, Pipes makes an excellent argument. As a comprehensive explanation of the causes leading up to the Russian Revolution, this condensed booklet fails.

A revolutionary rethink.......2002-08-24

As well as completely changing the political and geographical structure of Europe, the demise of the Soviet Union has significantly altered the approach of historical scholarship about the Russian Revolution.

In Three Whys of the Russian Revolution, the eminent scholar of Russian history, Richard Pipes, confronts the challenge of assessing the causes and course of the Russian Revolutions from a post-Cold War perspective.

Pipes explains that for 70 years prior to the 1990's, historians in the West adopted a "revisionist" perspective of the Russian Revolutions that was largely influenced by Communist scholarship. The events of 1917, these Communist scholars concluded, were nothing but revolutionary activity.

Western scholarship's acceptance of this conclusion stems, Pipes explains, from a lack of source material, much of which was deemed classified by the Soviet regime.

But access to this information is now open, and Pipes, among others, has utilized this opportunity in an attempt to re-evaluate the Revolutions, with the product being two extensive works (on which these essays are based). Not surprisingly, his understanding of the events of 1917 has changed somewhat, and thus the three essays in the book are a continued attempt to debunk much of the "revisionist" perspective with less radical conclusions.

Among the notions that Pipes challenges is the very insistence by the "revisionists" that the Revolutions were in fact revolutions.

As the author clearly outlines, the events of 1917 were actually the work of a small group of intellectuals headed by the idealist Lenin. His overthrow of the Czarist regime is argued by Pipes as being a coup d'etat which involved the people as a whole in only a small degree.

This brings Pipes to his second major argument. Were the people ready, willing, or even a part of the coup d'etat process? It has often been a marvel to historians that the agrarian based nation of Russia was the one nation to take heed of Marx's dialectical writings. But, as Pipes explains, the people (that is, peasantry) indeed had little reason or precedent to desire a change in the ruling regime, and the radical writings of Lenin and his cohorts had little impact on them, since it offered little in the way of a betterment of lifestyle.

Lastly Pipes addresses the post-coup d'etat events surrounding the ascension of Stalin as the next leader of the Soviet Regime. Several years after the events of 1917, Lenin's failing health allowed Stalin to enter the scene, a man who Lenin recognized as having an unstable personality, one unviable for effectively continuing the Communist programmes as Lenin had planned.

This opposition to Stalin was glossed over by Communist scholars to maintain a healthy image of the leadership, and thus was subsequently adopted by Western scholars.

It is easily said, then, that there is much of value in Three Whys of the Russian Revolution to history students and others interested in the events of 1917. Pipes' three essays present sound, articulate, and compelling arguments as to the causes and course of the Revolutions, and is thus an important asset for future scholarship on the subject.

Good, Brief Intro to Russian Revolution.......2002-05-30

Yes, Professor Pipes argues some conservative points, but this book is a very useful antidote to other histories written by persons with left-wing axes to grind. Pipes at least is open and honest about his background and perspective, and based upon his other works which I have read he has conducted careful, extensive scholarship. In his other more detailed books--The Russian Revolution and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime--he provides further evidence for judgments provided in this volume, and narrative history of the Russian Revolution and its immediate aftermath.

One part of this book which I found particularly interesting was the discussion of why Stalin came to power. Pipes argues that, rather than being a deviation from the natural course of Bolshevism, Stalinism was a logical outcome, and Stalin implemented some, though not all, of Lenin's goals. Pipes also shows how Stalin achieved and consolidated his power through his skill at administration, and his ability to insert his supporters into key positions.

Book Description

In 1917, the world was turned upside down by a popular uprising and then a Bolshevik coup d'état in Russia. Suddenly, the socialist revolution that many had hoped for and had expected was underway, Capitalism was morally and materially exhausted by war, and history seemed to be on the side of communism at last. But as Michael Occleshaw brilliantly shows in this startling new appraisal of the revolution and civil war in Russia, the Bolsheviks were shrewd and flexible operators. They used an alliance with the Kaiser's Germany to protect their infant regime and to destroy domestic challengers to their government. The British, the French, and the Americans, meanwhile, actively sought ways to cooperate with the new government regardless of their deep ideological differences. Occleshaw has discovered a wealth of new information that deepens and enriches our understanding of this crucial period in world history. In revolutionary Russia, he reveals a teeming underground of espionage, double-dealing, and adventurism. From the secret negotiations between the Bolsheviks and the capitalist powers to Britain's plans for a separate Cossack state, Occleshaw reveals a history darker, more dangerous, and more exciting than anyone could have imagined.

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Dark secrets and doings.......2007-02-16

This book recounts in often mind-numbing detail the secret war carried out within the Soviet Union from and after the First World War. It's an exciting tale, but is marred by being a bit top heavy with names. Despite that, the author tells a compelling tale, and anyone seriously interested in this period of history in Eastern Europe will want to read this book.

Goes beyond most histories of the era to examine the complex, interconnected political interactions.......2007-01-04

DANCES IN DEEP SHADOWS: THE CLANDESTINE WAR IN RUSSIA 1917-20 provides the setting of 1917 Russia, when a Bolshevik coup set the stage for socialism and vanished a capitalist structure in the country - but it goes beyond most facts in examining the underlying influence and sentiments of the Bolsheviks, who used an alliance with Germany to protect their regime and destroy the opposition to their plans. DANCES IN DEEP SHADOWS goes beyond most histories of the era to examine the complex, interconnected political interactions of Russia with other countries, adding in new information to reveal elements of espionage, subterfuge and manipulation. When added into the picture, these elements go farther than most in explaining the rise of socialism in the country.

Nestor Makhno Anarchy's Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917-1921

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"He sought to give land to the peasants, factories to the workers intact and advised them to organize themselves"
What your history teacher didn't tell you

Nestor Makhno Anarchy's Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917-1921
Alexandre Skirda
Manufacturer: AK Press
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ASIN: 1902593685

Book Description

Available for the first time in English, here's the gripping story of Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno. With his usual wit and engaging style, Skirda chronicles the life of a legend and the insurgent army that fought in his name. Always controversial, Makhno has been described as everything from a drunken bandit to an inspirational hero. From Makhno's imprisonment, to battles with the Bolsheviks and the White Army, to the final exile in Paris, Skirda captures the life of Makhno and the history of the Makhnovist movement.

Alexandre Skirda is the foremost anarchist theorist and activist writing in Europe today.

Customer Reviews:

"He sought to give land to the peasants, factories to the workers intact and advised them to organize themselves".......2006-12-10

Nestor Makhno was a man of unparalleled single-mindedness, unflagging courage, tactical brilliance, and utter devotion to the necessity of real human liberty, fraternity and equality. Although described as a Ukrainian partisan, nothing was provincial about Makhno's anarchist vision as Skirda's book demonstrates. The Ukraine was the arena in which he fought for that vision and for the safety and well being of the Ukrainian "toilers."

The Ukrainians were beset by murderers and oppressors of every sort and ideology. After the fall of the Russian empire and the ascendancy of Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks entered into the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ceding the Ukraine among other territories to the Central Powers effectively ending Russia's involvement in World War 1. The Makhnovists successfully repulsed the new masters of the Ukraine. But others enemies would arise--the White Russian forces, the Red Army--that the Makhnovists would engage almost always successfully.

In the end the Makhnovists made a fatal mistake, one that would be repeated by the anarchists years later during the Spanish civil war. They entered into a military alliance with the Bolsheviks (Marxist Leninists) to fight the Whites, trusting the USSR's promises that they had no territorial aims on the Ukraine. Although successfully winning battles against the Red army, the sheer size of their forces overwhelmed the Makhnovists. Makhno barely escaped and ended his years poor, cheated by "sympathizers" out of funds donated to him and almost completely abandoned as an exile in Paris.

Skirda's book dispels many myths about Makhno, mostly spread by historical revisionists in the Soviet Union. Here we see Makhno the executioner of anti-Semitic murders not one himself; Makhno the worst nightmare of the White Russian forces and not one of their collaborators; Makhno the liberator of the toilers and not their enslaver like the Reds.

Nothing in the text of this book is disappointing. It's thorough, passionately written, admirably detailed, yet lacking in one important respect to make it an important scholarly tool. It has no index. I cannot fathom why.

Nevertheless, I highly recommend reading this book. I suspect it is probably the best portrait of Makhno's life in print.

What your history teacher didn't tell you.......2006-06-09

For those of us who went or are going to school in the United States, it sometimes seems impossible to get a real picture of the Russian Revolution. So much baggage and enmity clogs the works that most of the time only a two dimensional sketch of one of the pivotal periods of modern history can be achieved, leaving out the breadth and complexity of the many players, parties, ideas, struggles, and factions. Most people graduate from high school and even college with the formless impression that "communism" is "bad."

Luckily, I had a high school history teacher that took the time to say, "These are the basic ideas of Communism: A, B, C, & D. These are the various currents of Communist thought. This is the basic history of the Revolution and the early Soviet state. What matches up? What doesn't? What went on here?"

Skirda's biography of Makhno achieves the same thing. It follows this pivotal figure and his cadre, from well before the Revolution to well after it. It offers actual history of the Revolution--history that was abused and twisted by the Soviet state as "reactionary," and completely ignored in the West, perhaps because it would undermine the flat demonization of the Revolution as "bad." Makhno and his group literally took to the hills to wrench the central Ukraine from the grip of tyrannical barons; fought off invading armies intent on reinstating the old regime; and then turned around to try to keep the Bolshevik invaders from instituting an entirely new regime of tyrannical barons.

While the book is occasionally a bit heavy on blow-by-blow recounting of military movements and tactical nuances, after a while the reader begins to get a sense for Makhno, not only as a military leader and tactician, but also as an amazingly sharp and daring human being. Skirda does an excellent job at contrastinig between the aims and methods of the Bolsheviks, and the aims and methods of the Ukrainian Anarchists. A reader with no background at all in the history of the Revolution will come away from this book with a solid footing upon which to build; and the student of 1915 will come away with a completely new angle and set of knowledge that will deeply inform their understanding of these events.

Books like this are an act of kindness to people that want to understand the realities history (and the present), rather than just shrug and drink down the same old rhetoric.

Average customer rating:

Volkogonov mis-quotes Trotsky
The Man Destroyed By the Revolution He Made
Trostsky Comes Alive
The Siren's call
Very poorly written bio of a great man

Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary
Dmitri Volkogonov
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Lenin: A New Biography
Stalin
Autopsy For An Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime
My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography (Dover Value Editions)
The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky 1929-1940

ASIN: 0684822938

Customer Reviews:

Volkogonov mis-quotes Trotsky.......2007-01-18

As someone who is interested in the Russian Revolution, I have to say that Volkogonov's biography is inaccurate. He makes false claims, which he never backs up. (For example, Volkogonov states that Trotsky was corrupt, early on his book, but he never presents any supporting facts for this assertation.) He also grievously misquotes Trotsky as saying, "It is impossible to organize an army without repression. It is necassary to give soldiers the choice of death at the front or the rear." This is only a part of the original quote, taken from My Life, by Trotsky, which reads, "It impossible to organize an army without repression. It is necassary to give soldiers the choice between death at the front or the rear. That was the principle of old armies, but we organized an army on the principles of the October Revolution." The point is not to disput the accuracy of Trotsky's statement, but to get an idea of what he said.
I am sure Mr. Volkogonov worked very hard on his book, but reviews by disillisioned ex-communists are not really the best source of information about revolutionaries. As Chris Harman says, "You have to sympathise with a revolution to write about it." This is because without sympathy, no one will understand what motivated the Bolsheviks, or any other bunch of revolutionaries. It seems to be popular now to beat dead Marxists even deader. Whatever our political opinions, it does no good to judge Trotsky from the view-point of the 21st century, after the collapse of Stalinsim. People have to be judged in the context of their time. Ignoring the battle between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks also gives a distorted view of Trotsky, who, like all Russian Marxists of his time was deeply changed by the split. Hate to say it, but, Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary is an ax job. Ironic, huh, that Trotsky's biography whould be called an ax-job. There should be a limit on the number of those one person can get. For a REAL analysis of Trotsky, I would go for Isaac Deutscher's biography (it's three volumes but is absolutely fascinating, I read the first book in two days. GREAT books.) A warning with those books, however, is that Vol. 1 seems very pro-Trotsky, until the end, where Deutscher brings up some very tough questions about Trotsky's involvement in the so-called "Labour-armies". W. Bruce Linclon has written an amazing trilogy of books about the Russian Revolution in general, though it essential to read his Red Victory to gain a clear understanding of the conditions facing the Bolsheviks at the end of the Civil War. Trotsky's autobiography (My Life) is also a good source, though like all autobiographies, it has to be taken with a grain of salt. A warning about My Life- it is very interesting but contains some passages that might require liberal use of the Marxists Internet Archive's Dictionary of Marxism. I hope readers will turn to more balanced sources than Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary, when researching Trotsky's life. A modern-day Marxist could easily blow off Volkogonov's work as crap. Deutscher's sympathetic but relentless biography is impossible for anyone to brush off or forget.

The Man Destroyed By the Revolution He Made.......2005-11-25

Leon Trotsky is one of the most fascinating, and yet despicable
men in history. The most brilliant of the Bolsheviks who made the October Revolution in Russia and its number 2 leader during the Civil War that solidified the Communist regime, the man is truly an enigma. At a young age, he decided to use his talents to create a Marxist world-wide revolution and still at a young age, had already made a name for himself by moving into Lenin's close circle before the famous Second Party Congress that led to the formation of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions and then to being one of the leaders of the abortive 1905 Revolution in Russia. It is already at this early stage we see the strange combination of far-sightedness combined with myopia that came to characterize him. This is manifested in Trotsky's correct realization that Lenin's formula for creating a tightly controlled movement ruled by the Center would ultimately lead to a one-man dictatorship. Yet, in spite of his almost prophetic perception of Lenin's flaws, when the February 1917 Revolution leading to the overthrow of the Tsarist regime occurs, Trotsky throws all caution to the wind and rejects all his previous criticism of Lenin and the Bolshevist path and wholeheartedly joins him in his plan to carry out a Bolshevik coup. With the success of the Bolsheviks in coming to power, Trotsky reaches the peak of his career, first as Commissar for Foreign Affairs given the unenviable task of negotiating with the Germans who were demanding immense
swaths of Russian territory. He then moves on to be Commissar for War. Here Volkogonov explodes one of the myths that has come up around Trotsky which claims that, overnight, this bookworm and orator suddenly became a military genius in creating the Red Army and leading it to victory over the White forces opposing the Bolsheviks. Volkogonov points out that Trostky, against the views of others like Stalin and Voroshilov supported the use of former Tsarist military officers (called "specialists") to lead the Red Army and they are the ones who really ran the war, even though their "ideological purity" was suspect. Trotsky's role, although important, was primarily to give motivational speeches to the troops and party cadres and to be the liaison with the government in Moscow.
We also now see the dark side of the man, in his support of mass terror, executions, confiscation of grain and the like, in order to bring about his Marxist "utopia".
With the victory of the Bolsheviks, coinciding with Lenin's deteriorating health, the other Bolshevik leaders, always jealous of Trotksy's eloquence and brilliance and his late "jumping on the bandwagon", began to plot to remove him.
At this critical point, Trotsky's myopia, combined with poor health come into play, and he easily falls into the trap of his enemies, the principle one being Stalin, and he is eased out of power. Even though Lenin viewed him as his successor, Trotsky (who was tricked into not coming to Lenin's funeral) is unable to use this and falls quickly.
After this, Trotsky's life quickly goes into a downward spiral. Because of his blind belief that world revolution (which the other Bolsheviks were rapidly losing interest in) is more important that "building socialism in one country", he is expelled from his posts, then the Politburo, then the party and then the USSR in short order. He spends the rest of his life in exile.
Although we again see his farsightedness in predicting that Stalin would reach an accomodation with Hitler, and then correctly predicting that Hitler would turn on Stalin and invade the USSR in 1941, we also see his blindness in refusing to view Lenin as anything other as a perfect saint and prophet (his cult of Lenin was just as extreme as that of Stalin's, only less cynical), and his ridiculous belief that Stalin's adoption of Trotsky's radical farm collectivisation in 1929 might lead to Stalin recalling him from exile. Stalin's show trials against "Trotskyism" sends Trotsky into a mantle of self-pity about all the "lies" being told about him, all the while ignoring his own role in creating the terror state and all the innocent victims he created. He denounces the Stalin terror against the Party, yet he criticized Stalin for halting the collectivization program that led 10 million deaths from terror and famine. All these contradictions lead in the end to Trotsky being isolated by the Marxists outside the USSR and the pathetic failure of his attempt to create a Fourth International. Finally, his own entourage is infiltrated by Stalinist agents, his close family members are murdered, and he is left alone in Mexico to face the inevitable-an assassin (Ramon Mercader) who easily gains access to the old man who lets down his guard because he is tired of being perpetually on the run from Stalin's murder machine. Mercader finally puts him out of his misery.
The life of Trotsky is a tragedy, the story of a man with great potential, who used it to create one of the most evil regimes in human history, and in the end he is consumed by it. This book is a good introduction to this fascinating figure. The author admits that Deutcher's book is very good, but for someone who wants a shorter introduction to the Eternal Revolutionary, this is a good place to start.

Trostsky Comes Alive.......2001-05-24

Volkogonov has written a very sensitive portrait of Trotsky. For specialists, of course, it should be combined with a reading of Deutscher's three-volume biography, but for general readers Volkogonov should suffice. Volkogonov's "Trotsky" is not as scholarly as Deutscher's masterly work, but it's more balanced. The author, a disillusioned former Communist, recognizes Trotsky's genius and portrays him in sympathetic and tragic terms, yet frequently reminds us that his subject was working under fatally flawed premises. Since he doesn't take communism seriously on an intellectual level, he spares us most of the details about theoretical clashes among the Bolsheviks over Marxist interpretations. He also reminds us that even though Trotsky never ceased criticizing Stalin's tyranny, his own role in the development of the murderous role of the CPSU was not innocent. Some readers may justly criticize Volkogonov's haphazard organization of his materials, but I find it doesn't detract from his work, and I rather enjoyed his more personal observations.

The Siren's call.......2000-09-03

"The entire structure of Leninism is at present based on lies and falsification and carries within it the poisonous seeds of its own destruction."

Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, known as Trotsky, the one time Social Democrat, one time political opponent of Lenin, one time war correspondent, one time toast of radical society dilatants, one time People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, one time member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, and finally political fugitive and Stalinist purge victim wrote the above quote in 1913. Dmitri Volkogonov's book, Trotsky, provides a stimulating portrait of this fascinating personality and the various roles/political outlooks that he struggled through.

To start let's consider Volkoganov's view of the 2nd Party Congress held in London in the summer of 1903. Far from repeating the usual interpretation, he offers a new one, namely that instead of being simply a question of party organization which divided the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, it was "over a difference in the theory and practice of revolutionary methodology. The congress formalized the coexistence of two parallel tendencies: one radical, revolutionary and uncompromising, which would characterize the Bolsheviks; the other reformist, evolutionary and parliamentary, which was to become the hallmark of those henceforth known as Mensheviks" page 29. As the author mentions, it is also interesting to note that the original platform of the RSDLP advocated democracy, secret suffrage, inviolability of the person, freedom of thought, speech, press, movement, assembly, strikes and trade unions as well as other similar goals.

How did all these noble dreams of a great humanist state end up as a mass gulag? The answer in one word is Lenin. Lenin, the egotistical nihilist, rejected out of hand any "bourgeois theory", relying solely instead on his own interpretation of Marx and Engels. Any non-Bolshevik political opponent was subject to the worst sort of derogatory comments and personal attack. In March of 1917, Lenin arrived in revolutionary Petrograd unwilling to compromise with anyone and enjoying unlimited financial resources thanks to the German General Staff. Trotsky, who had since joined the Bolsheviks, supported Lenin's hard line unquestioningly. While the Provisional Government worried of an attack from the right, Lenin, ever the cynical opportunist, promised an end to the war and land to the peasants. Bolshevik agitators spread through the army to convince the troops to desert or simply ignore the orders of their officers. By October the stage was set, a radical party of limited support and scope was able to overthrow what remained of the Provisional Government with little effort or bloodshed, but by rejecting all compromise and by ruthlessly exercising complete power, Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks made the Russian Civil War a reality. After the October "Revolution" Trotsky became ever more important to Lenin, whose effectiveness as a speaker was limited. As Yaroslavsky described him at the time, Trotsky was "a man most profoundly dedicated to the revolution, a man who has grown up to be a tribune, with a tongue as finely honed and flexible as steel, a tongue that can cut his enemies down, and a pen which scatters a wealth of ideas like handfuls of artistic pearls." Page 82.

Perhaps the author's most important view is that the tragedy that became the Soviet Union required each of the Bolshevik triumvirate to play the part he was most suited for. Lenin was the ruthless opportunist, his unquestioning will to destroy and control by terror setting the tone and shape of the entire system. Stalin was the pathological paranoid master of conspiracy, the consolidator, basically a fascistic criminal, who had got his start in the Party as a bank robber. And Trotsky? He provided the siren's song for the masses, the pure light of his reason projected to attract a storm of adolescent and unquestioning human devotion and energy willing to follow whoever held the red flag. Is it any wonder that Trotsky didn't outlast the Civil War period by very long? After his expulsion, Trotsky provided the excuse for Stalin's tyranny, even supplying the ideological framework for the disasterous "Second October Revolution" of 1928-40. The Bolshevik system required all three and played itself out in a very mechanical, a very deterministic way, success meant retaining absolute power and in that one sense, the only goal with any meaning for Lenin, it was successful until 1991 when the machinary collapsed.

Why do unrepentant Leninists in the West continue with the charade that Bolshevism held any hope for mankind? Pride and egotism, along with a cynical and patronizing view of humanity blind them to the shambles all around them, block their noses from the smell of the grimacing, yet rancid Leninist corpse that they have strapped to their backs. That and the role they play as scarecrow/whipping boy for the reactionary and Reaganist right which automatically labels any opposition to the corporate-dominated national security state as "communism" gives them a false, yet ego-enhancing, sense of importance. In other words they'd love to stop acting like trick dogs, but they can't give up the attention they get.

This book and the author's biography on Lenin tell the whole sordid history. Time for the "left" to finally bury the Leninist corpse and decide on a counter-argument that exposes Reaganist "behind-closed-doors-government". What America especially needs is a new urge and will to protect our basic human rights and liberties, such as the original goals of our Founding Fathers or, for that matter, of the RSDLP. Nobody needs another utopian ideology, such as Leninism or some deluted, "people-friendly" version of Reaganism, but a pragmatic program that sees humanity, its natural physical environment and its artifical economic environment for what they are and responds accordingly.

Very poorly written bio of a great man.......2000-07-25

Attempting to make the most interesting political figure of the twentieth century seem absolutely boring would be quite an obstacle for most people, especially when you have access to the Soviet Presidential Archive, but Dmitri Volkogonov has somehow achieved this task with flying colors. The historian Isaac Deutscher wrote a three-volume biography of Leon Trotsky in the 1950's, and his writings were far superior to this biography of Trotsky by Volkogonov, which was written within the past decade!

The playright Edvard Radzinsky had the same access to the Presidential Archive that Volkognov had, yet his biography of Stalin was one of the most informative books I have ever read. Perhaps Volkogonov attempted to take advantage of the newly established market economy in Russia by producing as many books as he could(at the expense of research and lucidity of writing), and after they attained a respectable amount of success, he walked away with all the money(of course he died in 1995, so I guess his family now is now taking the money). He tells the reader everything they could have found elsewhere(even on Microsoft Encarta!), such as Trotsky's birth in Yanavka in 1879, the Russian Social Democratic split in 1903, his first encounter with Lenin, his role as the founder of the Red Army, etcetera, and etcetera. This is all fine if you're not familiar with Trotsky life, but it's not fine if the author has access to as exclusive as documents as the Presidential archive. A prospective reader would have expected a book that claims to be a "breakthrough reinterpetration" of Trotsky to live up to it's name, but I found that it almost certainly didn't. Although [this] is a good price for a Hardback book with a dustjacket, I would still recommend that you just look at MSN Encarta's description of Trotsky, you learn all of the same stuff that Volkogonov somehow crammed into 488 pgs(maybe this is what he did to write the book, who knows?). Edvard Radzinsky has written books about Rasputin, Nicholas II, and Stalin, so there's always the possibility that he'll write a biography of Trotsky, and maybe even Lenin(tasks which would undo all of the damage that Volkogonov has done to the prestige of the Presidential Archive).

The Romanovs & Mr Gibbes: The Story of the Englishman who Taught the Children of the Last Tsar
Average customer rating:

The Romanovs Revisted

Interesting book about an unusual man.

A Pleasant Little Biography

historical and fascinating!

The Romanovs & Mr Gibbes: The Story of the Englishman who Taught the Children of the Last Tsar
Frances Welch
Manufacturer: Short Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Court of the Last Tsar: Pomp, Power and Pageantry in the Reign of Nicholas II

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Jewels of the Tsars: The Romanovs and Imperial Russia

ASIN: 1904095488

Book Description

In 1908, Englishman Sydney Gibbes was appointed tutor to the children of Tsar Nicholas II; over the next ten years, he became deeply attached to the Imperial family—and they to him. Here, Frances Welch draws on a wealth of unpublished material to cast new light on the fabled Romanov story, telling it from the tutor's unique point of view. Ultimately, the tragic events of the Russian Revolution devastated Gibbes, turning him into an obsessive Russophile, who was to go to extraordinary lengths to remain faithful to the old order.

Customer Reviews:

The Romanovs Revisted.......2007-04-12

A very interesting pocket book. A great perspective of the times. For a history buff, a good eye witness biographical account. However, considering the near epic situation of those times and places, the book seems sparse. A noticeable ommission are (the other?) Gibbes' photographs not published in this book. I've seen photographs published elsewhere that were attributed to be taking by Gibbs. A proper mix of these photos and the book would have added much. But still, this book is very much worth reading. For you history buffs, and a complementary account, check out Gilliard's writtings.

Interesting book about an unusual man........2006-07-26

This book doesn't shed any new light on the Romanovs, but it does give new insight into a man who knew them very well. It is a short book, but very informative.

A Pleasant Little Biography.......2006-01-23

Sydney Gibbes would have been unknown to all except his own family had he not taken the momentous step of going to Russia in the early 1900s. There he sought out work as tutor to the children of various noble families, with indifferent results and gaining a reputation for behavior, which while not all that unusual for the times, definitely raised a few eyebrows (especially his insistence on whipping his students). He strode into history in 1908 when Empress Alexandra Fedorovna needed a tutor to correct her daughters' accents and hired him sight unseen. Gibbes remained with the family for the next ten years through war and revolution, teaching the four Grand Duchesses and then the hemophiliac Tsarevich.

Gibbes doesn't strike the reader as particularly admirable at first. He was definitely a social-climber and not particularly talented as a teacher. His private life was mysterious, involving some mild flirtations with an Englishwoman and some dreams (carefully recorded for posterity by Gibbes himself) which seem classically Freudian.

Gibbes came into his own, and we find reason to respect and like him, with the Russian Revolution of March 1917. As an Englishman he could have easily left Russia and gone home to safety. Instead he chose to remain with the Imperial Family, sharing their captivity in their palace outside Petrograd and then in Tobolsk. He underwent considerable hardship and personal danger, but he was selflessly devoted to the family. Even after he was told to leave by the Bolsheviks who were holding the family in their final prison in Ekaterinburg he remained in the city, walking past the House of Special Purpose and trying to get in for visits. After the family's murder, he assisted the investigators trying to determine what had happened.

After leaving Russia Gibbes lived in China before returning to England. He became an Orthodox priest, adopted a Russian orphan boy, and spent most of the rest of his life in Oxford, maintaining a museum of keepsakes of the family he had served for so long. He was not particularly effective as a priest, but he was sadly missed and fondly remembered after his death, which is a pretty good epitaph for anyone.

This biography makes use primarily of Gibbes'own notes and diary, so that the reader must look elsewhere for historical insight into his life, but nevertheless it does a nice job telling the story of a quiet, somewhat limited man who was a good servant and friend.

historical and fascinating!.......2004-09-08

I enjoyed this book tremendously! It is a real page turner! It follows the incredible life and circumstances of M r. Gibbes, tutor to the last Russian imperial family until his death. Very precise,well researched,with many new facts and information. It is also beautifully written. Will please all the devotees of the Romanov family,as well as all those who enjoy a great story!

Average customer rating:

Poorly written and filled with speculation
Balanced, definitive biography
Pyschobabble with a generous mix of bizarre hatred
Great Book Whether you love him or hate him.
Interesting... but Ultimately Disappointing

Lenin: A Biography
Robert Service
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674003306

Book Description

Lenin's politics continue to reverberate around the world even after the end of the USSR. His name elicits revulsion and reverence, yet Lenin the man remains largely a mystery. This biography shows us Lenin as we have never seen him, in his full complexity as revolutionary, political leader, thinker, and private person.

Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in 1870, the son of a schools inspector and a doctor's daughter, Lenin was to become the greatest single force in the Soviet revolution--and perhaps the most influential politician of the twentieth century. Drawing on sources only recently discovered, Robert Service explores the social, cultural, and political catalysts for Lenin's explosion into global prominence. His book gives us the vast panorama of Russia in that awesome vortex of change from tsarism's collapse to the establishment of the communist one-party state. Through the prism of Lenin's career, Service focuses on dictatorship, the Marxist revolutionary dream, civil war, and interwar European politics. And we are shown how Lenin, despite the hardships he inflicted, was widely mourned upon his death in 1924.

Service's Lenin is a political colossus but also a believable human being. This biography stresses the importance of his supportive family and of its ethnic and cultural background. The author examines his education, upbringing, and the troubles of his early life to explain the emergence of a rebel whose devotion to destruction proved greater than his love for the "proletariat" he supposedly served. We see how his intellectual preoccupations and inner rage underwent volatile interaction and propelled his career from young Marxist activist to founder of the communist party and the Soviet state--and how he bequeathed to Russia a legacy of political oppression and social intimidation that has yet to be expunged.

Customer Reviews:

Poorly written and filled with speculation.......2007-05-10

I'm amazed that anyone could enjoy this biography, regardless of the depth of new information it contains. Robert Service apparently doesn't know how to write a cohesive story. When I first started reading, his psychological insights into Lenin seemed stretched, and I kept wondering how he knew these internal secrets about Lenin's inner thoughts and emotions. By the time I was halfway through the book I realized it was mostly speculation, casting doubt on other statements he made.
Personally, I think Lenin was an evil man, but Service's moralistic slams against Lenin quickly became annoying. Again and again he made snide little remarks especially about Lenin's hypocrisy, which may be true, but become silly after a while.
These problems, however, pale in comparison to Service's writing style. His paragraphs seem to jump from subject to subject without warning. He will begin a story and never finish it, often abruptly moving to a new subject without properly explaining the first. He continually begins paragraphs with connect phrases, such as "In light of this. . ." When one actually reads the new paragraph, however, one sees absolutely no connection with the previous discussion. Although you might think this is simply a minor criticism, it becomes quite serious when the book lacks a sense of logical and narrative flow.
Having said that, I learned an enormous amount from reading this book. The experience, however, was also the most unpleasant I have undergone in reading a biography. If you want a lot of fascinating insight into Lenin's life, perhaps this is a good source. If you want to enjoy the process of obtaining that insight, however, go elsewhere.

Balanced, definitive biography.......2007-03-15

Like Lenin's life, this book goes through slow, quiet times as well as periods of frenetic activity. Especially interesting are sections on Lenin's childhood and family, the October Revolution itself, and Lenin's final political struggle with Stalin as he battled his failing health. The chapters dealing with his nearly 20 years in exile are a bit of a slog, but do necessary justice to this phase of his life and illustrate that Lenin spent most of his adult life in petty but ruthless fights with other Bolsheviks.

Robert Service does not paint a pretty picture, but no honest biographer could with the today's open archives. Lenin was ruthless in pursuit of his socialist vision, destroying political rivals, horrifying many erstwhile allies with his ferocity, and never hesitant to use violence, and deceit. A bookish intellectual, Lenin advocated terror but let others do his dirty work. Lenin demonstrated remarkable tactical flexibility (several amazing flip flops are documented) even when his primary goals and assumptions never changed. As a young man, Lenin refused to engage in famine relief work with his family noting that peasant suffering and starvation will push Russia through necessary stages of economic development towards the inevitable communist utopia. With this, and other similar episodes, Service argues that Lenin was motivated more by hatred and revenge towards the tsarist regime than any sympathy towards the poor.

The book is quite successful as a biography in that it gives you a feel for Lenin's personality, family, likes and dislikes. He has a cosmopolitan love for European culture and a general disdain for all things Russian. Lenin is fastidious, cannot stand noise while working, and is obsessive about keeping his pencils sharp. His outward politeness disguised an inner ruthlessness. He is something of a spoiled "wonder child", adored and idolized by his mother, sisters, and wife. The biography does justice to the complexity of Lenin's character, and Service occasionally allows himself a little affection for his subject without ever condoning or whitewashing the horrors he perpetrated.

Note this is primarily a biography of Lenin, not a history of the Russian Revolution. Lenin's contributions and reactions to key events are given more attention than narration of the events themselves. Depending on your interests, you may want to consult a general history of the Russian Revolution instead of, or in addition to, this book. Sheila Fitzpatrick's "The Russian Revolution" is a concise and solid introduction.

This may be the best all-purpose Lenin biography out there. The treatment of Lenin is balanced, and Service presents alternative viewpoints fairly even when he dismisses them in favor of his own opinions. I preferred it to Volkogonov's biography, which is really directed at a Russian audience.

Pyschobabble with a generous mix of bizarre hatred.......2007-01-18

As someone interested in the Russian Revolution, I found this book at a school library and read it. I was not favorably impressed. Lenin is pushed down to the level of megalomaniac idiot. You don't have to like the guy to try to really explain his motivations or to seek real answers to the questions that bamboozle people. In addition to the pyscho-babble mentioned by other reviewers, I had a problem with Robert Service picking on someone who is to dead to sue him for slander. Robert Service accuses Lenin of shooting down his own Soviet troops (an absolute idiocy in the middle of a civil war).It may be fashionable to produce "exposes" of Soviet leaders, but that doesn't make it a good trend. Modern biographers of the Russian revolutionaries need to remember that Joe McCarthy and his Committee are no longer here to black-list them. In Robert Service's biography, I was upset to find the author judging Lenin through 21st century glasses. By this I mean:
1. Cutting out the context of the Russian economy's ruin during the Civil War.
2. The abject failures of the "democrats"
3. Forgetting what the alternatives would have been had the opposition won (I don't mean the Whites- even the peasants hated them)
I wonder what Mr. Service would do if he were in Lenin's shoes... While I'm wondering, I think I'll go pick up W. Bruce Lincoln's books on how the revolution happened and what happened during and after the civil war.

Great Book Whether you love him or hate him........2006-07-22

This book would be great for a research paper about Lenin! I enjoyed reading it immensly. It is well researched and well written. (see below for more on that) Whether you love him or hate him, if you are looking to find out anything about the man behind the name, then this is for you.

The only reason I do not give this 5 stars is because the language can be a bit hard to read for some. I am an avid reader, and am well educated, but even I had to get out the dictionary a few times.

Interesting... but Ultimately Disappointing.......2006-05-31

I approached this book with some enthusiasm as an introduction to a major 20th century figure about whom I knew very little. Now having completed the book I can say that I have a grasp of Lenin as a man, as a politician and as a historical figure but it took me a while to get there. Service paints a well rounded picture and clearly reveals Lenin's ruthlessness and intolerance and illuminates many other aspects of the man's character. Ultimately Lenin comes across as a monomaniacal egotist driven to impose his view of Marxism on others and uniterested in anything but politics.

The book though is marred by two failings. The first, which has been pointed out be other reviewers before me, is that Service occasionally overreaches on his conclusions regarding Lenin's psychological motivations. Certainly speculation is a part of historical biography but Service often gives the impression that he knows Lenin's thoughts. Secondly, and this is purely subjective, the book just didn't "grab" me. I have read several major biographical works of historical figures and the best ones draw me in as if I were reading a novel. This one did not, though I cannot explain exactly what it is about the book that fails in this regard. Perhaps Lenin is such an unsympathetic character and such a total politician that ultimately I could not find anything to relate to.

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